


the enemy of your enemy might be your girlfriend

by impossibletruths



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Dating Your Roommate Is A Bad Idea Don't Do It, Dorks in Love, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, University Bureaucracy Is The Worst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 06:14:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11457681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/pseuds/impossibletruths
Summary: Kima hates her roommate. Allura hates her roommate. Should be simple, right?Unfortunately, some battles you just can’t fight alone.





	the enemy of your enemy might be your girlfriend

**Author's Note:**

> a (very late) kimallura college au for [@faded-coat-of-blue](http://faded-coat-of-blue.tumblr.com)

Her roommate has moved in by the time she arrives, one side of the room decorated in soft blues and deep gold, as if someone’s pinterest board threw up extra-long twin sheets and a wall tapestry. Books are neatly arranged on the shelf by height and there’s a backpack slung over the back of the standard-issue dorm chair, notebooks stacked precisely on the desk. The girl herself is nowhere to be seen.

Kima already knows she's going to hate her.

“Well,” says Vord stiffly, looking around the room, from her roommate’s meticulously organized shelves to the three duffle bags sitting in the middle of Kima’s flimsy blue plastic mattress. “Here you are, then.”

“Yeah,” Kima grunts. “Right.”

Vord clears his throat. “I will see you in the summer. Should you, ah, need anything during the year––”

“I’ll figure it out,” she interrupts, ready to be gone of him yesterday, if not earlier. 

He opens his mouth for a moment, as if to say something, and thinks better of it. Maybe he can learn, Kima thinks, which is sort of unkind but also not unwarranted. “Yes, well. Goodbye.”

“Bye.”

She waits until he’s gone to slump on the shitty blue mattress, bags sliding on the plastic. The half-assed door decorations on the propped-open door proudly present her name and one Allura in crooked cursive.

Allura. What kind of shit name is Allura anyways?

She takes a deep breath. No, c’mon. New experiences. A college education. Time away from the home and its strict rules. It’s a good experience. A  _good_  experience.

It’d be better if she actually believed that.

“Oh,” says a girl at the door, interrupting her half-assed attempts to pump herself up for this. She stands in the doorway, and though uncertain wether or not she can enter, flaxen hair pulled back in two neat braids. “You must be––”

“Kima, yeah,” says Kima, feeling freshly uncharitable and a little bad about it but not quite bad enough to stop. “Door kind of gave it away.”

“Right. Yes, of course.”

Allura hovers.

Kima hates it immediately. She hates everything about her, her neat braids and her neat blue skirt and her neat bedspread and her  _hovering_  and––

“Are you coming in or not?”

So, okay, maybe she shouldn’t snap. Allura draws herself up, and with her back straight and her chin raised she suddenly looks–– Kima squashes that feeling  _really_ quickly.

Allura frowns. “If you’d rather I not be polite...”

Kima shrugs. “Waste of time."

Allura practically floats through the open door.

“Of course,” she says, icy, and Kima can’t keep eye contact. She turns around to busy herself with her bags. After a moment she hears the door close, and when she chances a glance around she’s alone in the room.

Oh, yeah. This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

* * *

To say she hates her roommate would be an overstatement, but Allura cannot deny there is a certain animosity at play. She chalks it up to the newfound discomfort of shared space and tries not to think about it too much.

She also makes a point of keeping late hours, because Kima is an early riser and Allura is markedly not. The different schedules seem to help, as much as anything can help this low, simmering resentment.

She doesn't mean to be petty about it, but the girl pries at her nerves and digs under her skin. She is loud when she is home, unflinching and as liable to offer an insult as a compliment with a particular backhanded cheer that sets Allura’s teeth on edge.

Also, she has taken to the appellation Allie, which grates to no end. Kima, of course, has the unfair advantage of having few potential nicknames to toss around in return. Allura tries her last name once, after a particularly passive aggressive row, and Kima’s eyes go tight and sullen and she scowls, “That’s not my name.”

Allura does her the kindness of not mentioning it again. Among ones roots is not always the most pleasant place to reside and Allura can be brittle and hard but she is not intentionally mean.

So they do their little dance, coolly polite and just on the edge of something greater, and it is not a comfortable thing but it works well enough. They are both adults, more or less. This they can manage.

* * *

Kima can’t manage all of this.

It’s not that the classes are too hard. It’s not that she and her roommate get along like cats and dogs. It’s not even that no one from the home has checked in on her in three weeks (actually, that one's something of a blessing).

No, it’s her biology class that’s killing her, the one she’s only taking because she needs the science credit. Or the professor, to be more precise.

“It’s all bullshit!” she complains to Drake, feet up in the common room as she eats cereal out of the box. “He’s crazy, he has no idea what he’s teaching, he’s bullying the entirety of the class––”

“What are you going to do about it?” Drake asks. 

“Fight him in the faculty parking lot,” Kima replies through a mouthful of cereal. Drake snorts.

“And it’ll look great on your record I’m sure.” 

“Hey.” Kima gestures at him with the cereal box. “I told you that in confidence.”

“We’re confidential here.” He's not wrong; the common room is empty at the moment. The sharp blue light of the emergency call station shines through the window, fading into the institutional white of the fluorescents overhead. Kima munches another handful of cereal.

“What if we could do something, though?” she considers. “Prove to the administration that he’s a piece of shit? Or at least do something to change it. No one deserves to be treated like that. ‘Specially not by a prof.”

Drake cocks his head slightly. “You mean that?”

She bristles. “Yeah, of course I mean that. I’m not just gonna sit here––”

“Whoa, alright.” Kima scowls. “I think I know just the person you should talk to.”

“If you say the dean of student affairs I’m going to hit you.”

“No, no,” Drake laughs. “I’ve got a friend who was telling me the same thing not two days ago. The two of you should meet. Can start your own little underground rebellion, yeah?”

Kima grins slow and a little wild. “Yeah,” she agrees. “Always wanted to be a rebel.”

"Oh, like you weren't already," Drake says, and Kima throws a couch pillow at him.

"Who's your friend?" Kima asks once Drake has righted himself. He tucks the pillow behind his head.

"You'll see. You'll like her though, I promise."

Kima takes that with a grain of salt, because Drake's taste in people tends to be questionable––case in point, he's hanging out with her at two in the morning––but she's curious more than anything.

“Great. Let’s do this.”

* * *

So Kima meets Drake’s mysterious friend one blustery Tuesday in early October and––

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

It’s Allura.

“Really?” demands Kima. “I mean,  _really_?”

“It wasn't my idea,” says Allura crossly. “From what I hear, it’s yours.”

Kima makes a face and seriously considers turning around and walking out of this quiet corner of the library and back to Drake to give him a piece of her mind, but.

She’s here for a reason, something that matters more than her, uh,  _strained_  relationship with her prissy roommate, so instead of turning tail and stalking off she drops into the chair across the table from Allura and holds out her hand.

Allura stares.

“You’re supposed to shake it,” Kima offers, because she's helpful like that. Allura frowns.

“I already know you.”

“Yeah, but. I guess we could start over.” Kima takes a deep breath. “Hi, I’m Kima, I’m abrasive and I want to fight the man. Your turn.”

Allura takes a long moment to appraise her, but when she reaches out to take Kima’s hand she could almost swear the other woman is smiling.

“Hello, Kima. I’m Allura. Though someone I know tends to call me Allie.” Kima grins. “I’m here to make life difficult for someone misusing power.”

"Great. At least we can agree on that.”

And it may not be a lot, but––

Allura steals the words right out of her mouth. “It’s a start.”

That it sure fucking is.

* * *

They call it a study group, and although it starts small, it grows quickly. Drake is their first recruit (”Technically I founded the damn thing,” he grumbles) but soon they are joined by Sirus and Dohla from Kima’s class, and Ghenn from the advanced section Allura is in, because she's actually good at science.

But mostly, it’s Kima and Allura. Only cause it’s easier, really––they already live together, and all that. It’s not like they’ve got to go out of their ways to meet up with each other and talk about the petition they’re sending around the student body, or the case they’re putting together for the Vice President of Academic Affairs, or the flyers they’re making to post around the student union, or any of that.

So the weeks tick away almost too quickly to count them, and they spend their free time with their heads bent over the same table into late into the nights, working towards some uncertain future that’s better than right now. The late days of summer fade into a crisp autumn, and there is Halloween––she manages to convince Allura to come with her to a party as the Tom to her Jerry and discovers the willowy woman can hold her alcohol like nobody business––and midterms, and turns out fighting a five-man war against tenured faculty is a bitch and a half.

Except, Kima’s kind of enjoying it. Like, yeah, it’s good to change shit for the better and all that, but Allura is... surprisingly fun to hang out with. She’s got a sense of humor buried beneath the prim exterior, cutting and dry, and Kima really likes it. She likes a lot about the girl, actually.

Who could’ve imagined?

Then suddenly, somehow, finals are upon them, and the semester ends in a whirlwind of studying and all-nighters and before she realizes it, it’s over. Allura flies home and Kima’s left alone in winter housing with nothing but the snow and her own thoughts for company as she puts the finishing touches on their papers and petitions, Allura joining her on long Skype calls as they hammer out the details, and maybe it’s a little overkill but Kima likes hanging out with her, and this strange fight they’re waging is as good a reason to talk to her as any.

Besides, it’s easier to pretend to do work than deal with–– feelings.

So school starts again, and they turn in all their evidence and signatures and arguments to the administration and the expression on President Tal'Dorei’s face is sort of priceless.

And then things just sort of. End.

Well, not  _end_  end. She still lives with Allura. But their case is trapped in the bureaucratic hell of the university administration and neither of them are actually taking classes with the professor in question in this semester, so they just sort of drift, as if those late night discussions never happened and they never shared the excitement of getting something done that would really make things better. Kima misses it.

It’s kinda funny, how you can miss someone when they’re right there.

Except it’s worse now, because now she knows what Allura looks like when she’s laughing, and when she’s had too much coffee, and how much she loves philosophy (which, gross). And sometimes this weird space between them disappears, like it was never there at all, and it’s just like that one blustery Friday in November when they went to that one movie, or the wet Monday before finals when they were curled on the couch together quizzing each other on biology terms, and it’s comfortable, y’know, soft and familiar, and it makes Kima’s stomach flip flop in inappropriate ways but she can’t help but enjoy it.

And the next day it’ll be like it never happened again, and, well, Kima’s getting pretty fucking sick of all the confusion and mixed signals. So Allura pulls away, and Kima pulls away, and what's it they say about things changing?

Looks like everything’s just gonna stay the same.

* * *

Things change.

Well, that is the outcome of the onwards progress of time, but in this instance, things change on a university level around mid April.

It’s truly far too long a time between the day they hand their research to the president of the university and the day the board of trustees makes their decision, but Allura already knows the molasses pace of bureaucracy and cannot say she is surprised.

The decision they hand down roughly boils down to: get over it.

Kima is, understandably, furious.

“Fuck the lot of them!” she declares, pacing the narrow gully between their beds. “Seriously! After everything we’ve done, they’re doing  _nothing_? Some fucking leadership they are!”

“We knew it was unlikely they would grant all our requests.”

“Yeah,  _all_  of them. This is... this isn’t even the bare minimum!”

Allura should be focused on their defeat, but instead she finds herself distracted by Kima’s burning fury. It’s kind of hot.

She shakes the thought away, focuses instead on the issue at hand. These are the sorts of thoughts she has been trying to distance herself from for the past four months. It is inappropriate to be crushing on your roommate.

“We can continue the fight,” she says mildly. Kima stops pacing to scowl at her, arms folded.

“We should have been fighting this whole time,” she grumbles, and Allura pulls a face because she’s right.

“We still have everything,” she says instead of agreeing. “We can pick up from where we left off, we can––”

“Oh, sure, cause it clearly worked so well.”

“Well what would you suggest?”

“I don’t know!” Kima throws her hands up and goes back to pacing. “Something bigger. Permanent.”

Allura scoffs. “Yes, let’s just hire a hitman to––”

“Well if you’re going to make fun of me, you can just not help at all.”

Allura bristles. “If you’re not going to be reasonable––”

“I’m being perfectly reasonable,  _you’re_  just not helping.”

“This is my fight too, you know!”

“You could fucking act like it instead of dropping into this fucking radio silence!”

“I am not dropping into radio silence,” Allura protests. Kima rolls her eyes.

“Right, of course not. You’re just ignoring me even though I livehere!” Allura opens her mouth to reply and Kima rolls right over her. "You have been for months, don't deny it."

“You have been doing exactly the same!” snarls Allura. “What, are we best friends now? Funny, I didn’t think we were!”

“Well maybe we could have been if you weren’t such a sanctimonious bitch!”

Allura feels like she’s been dumped in ice water. Kima looks much the same, eyes blown wide and suddenly still, and Allura can practically see her trying to take it back as she stumbles over her words, but there’s a distant ringing in her ears and all she hears is static.

Very, very calmly she stands, and grabs her bag and leaves. The door clicks behind her.

* * *

Kima doesn’t see Allura all weekend.

“Kinda fucked it up, didn’t you?” Drake asks her when she slumps next to him in Intro Religion on Monday morning.

“She talk to you?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

Kima fights off the urge to rest her head on the desk and instead fishes a pen out of her bag. “How do I fix it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Drake––”

He shrugs as their professor enters, an older man who apparently came out of retirement to teach this semester cause the university is that strapped for profs, and maybe it's no wonder they won't do anything about the dickwad in the bio department. It doesn't make Kima feel any better about it.

“Start with an apology,” he suggests under his breath, and then the lecture starts and Kima’s too busy taking notes on a reading she didn’t finish to ply Drake for advice.

An apology. She can manage an apology.  _Sorry I called you a bitch I’m just sort of in love with you and––_

Mmm. Yeah, maybe not.

By the time the hour is up she has four lines of notes and a dozen apologies rattling around her brain and she still feels like a piece of shit.

Great.

“Good luck,” Drake says with a gentle shoulder pat as he rushes off to his next class. Kima packs up her things slowly and sullenly and wishes she had any answers at all.

She also wishes she and Allura didn’t have class in the same building at the same time, because then she wouldn’t run into her on the stairs like some middle school sitcom, cause that's apparently what her life is.

“Um, Allie. Hi.”

Allura’s voice could probably free the tropics, or lava, or something else really hot and unfreezeable. “Kima.”

“I, look, uh. Can we talk?”

“I have class.”

Oh, right. That. “Maybe later?”

Allura seems to relax ever so slightly. Maybe it’s the abject, pathetic desperation splashed across Kima's face.

“Want to get lunch?” she offers, and it's almost an olive branch. Kima grabs it with both hands.

“Yeah. That would be great.”

“I’m out of class at noon.”

“I–– Yeah, okay. I’ll, uh, save us a table.”

“Alright.”

Allura clatters past her up the stairs, and Kima drags herself to the caf and hopes really hard that this isn't going to make things worse.

* * *

Allura actually shows up at 12:05, hair windswept and looking honestly unhappy, which is something of a surprise given that she always seems so put together, and Kima feels freshly awful, which sucks.

This whole thing sucks.

What a fucking mess.

“Hi,” she says when Allura sits down. Allura doesn’t say anything.

“I, um. I owe you an apology,” Kima offers, and it’s only a little bit like pulling teeth. “I shouldn’t have, uh. Called you a bitch. Or said you weren’t helping. Or, um. Any of that.”

Allura stares.

“I just. Like, yeah, this is a big deal, but it’s not a big enough deal that I had to, y'know. Be like that. So, I’m sorry.”

The silence is absolutely awful.

“Thank you,” says Allura finally, almost a whisper, and it’s possibly the best thing Kima has heard, and oh, wow, she’s so fucked. “I wasn’t fair either.”

“I’d like to be friends,” Kima offers. Allura smiles, small and delicate but, y'know, _there_ , which is a good sign.

“Me too. Let’s try again?”

“What?”

Allura holds her hand across the table, and it takes Kima a moment to realize she’s supposed to shake it.

“Hello,” says Allura. “I’m Allie. Sometimes I overthink things but I’m trying to be better about that.”

“Hi, Allie,” says Kima, and it’s an odd sort of lightness in her chest to hear Allie call herself that. “I’m Kima. Sometimes I’m a dick but I’m learning.”

Allie laughs. “Pleasure to meet you. Again.”

“Yeah. You too.” She’s smiling too much. She knows she’s smiling too much but she can’t help it; she just feels all light, inside and out. What a fucking sap.

Allura leans back in her seat. “How do you feel about making a terrible man’s life very difficult?”

“I feel  _great_ ,” Kima tells her, and then they’re both laughing, making a scene in the middle of the dining hall, and Kima doesn’t even care cause it’s her and Allie against the world again, and it feels  _right_.

Yeah, she’s super fucked.

* * *

It’s way harder to fight a two-woman (”five-man,” Drake grumbles over Chinese takeout) war against the administration when the administration has already shut your case down wholesale, but turns out Allura’s a stubborn motherfucker when she wants to be, and their friends know some shady shit. So, maybe they turn to underhand methods. They still have three weeks. Plenty to do in three weeks.

”Plenty to do” mostly turns out to be inciting the student body to walk out of class, and holding a rally on abuse of faculty power, and, memorably, egging his car.

It’s the egging his car that gets them into trouble.

To be clear: Kima played no part in it. But when she gets dragged before the Student Judicial Board, no one seems to care that she was, in fact, sleeping through a completely different class at the time during which said egging occurred.

Which is unfortunate, because not being in class is exactly why she's in trouble right now. Well, that and being a general menace to the administration but last time she checked the student handbook that wasn't against the rules.

“So?” asks the bored-looking junior sitting at the table in front of her. “Do you have anything to say in your defense?”

“I didn’t do it?” Kima suggests. There’s a swell of laughter behind her. Apparently people have been following this not-so-quiet rebellion of theirs. Who knew.

Drake, probably. Drake knows everything that happens on campus. She and Drake are going to have words.

“Do you have an alibi?” asks another juror, like this is CSI or something. No, not CSI, the other one. Law & Order.

“Uh,” says Kima intelligently.

“Yes,” says Allie politely from behind.

Kima only acts about fifty percent shocked, which she thinks is pretty good, all things considered.

“Yeah,” Kima echoes. “My roommate.”

There’s a bit of a flutter, and then Allura’s standing next to her. She’s really tall. Kima doesn’t remember her being that tall.

“She was in the room,” Allie says, even though there’s absolutely no reason Allura could know that because she... wasn’t home. Kima’s eyes narrow as the pieces fall into place. Now this is some CSI shit. “She slept through class.”

“Oh,” says the kid at the table, and he looks to the other two. The junior shrugs and pushes her hair out of her face.

“I guess you’re good then,” says the third kid, who Kima is pretty sure is related to the university president, and that doesn’t seem like nepotism at all. “Uh, sorry.”

“Yeah, no. It’s fine.”

There’s more shuffling, and they give her a piece of paper that essentially says “you didn’t do it” which seems kinda pointless but makes for a decent souvenir and then she and Allie are standing outside the student union, and it's all really very anticlimactic.

"Uh," says Kima, clutching her declaration of innocence in one hand and staring up at Allura. "How did you know I didn't egg his car if you weren't in the dorm?"

Allie shrugs. “Because I did it.”

“Oh.” Oh, okay. Yeah. She’s definitely in love. This is definitely what being in love is like. It's your roommate saying the egged your worst enemy's car for you.

Being in love is also really pretty anticlimactic, it turns out.

“You’re amazing," says Kima, when she can remember to speak, and it comes out a little more awestruck than she means it to be but there's kind of no helping it at this point. "Thank you.”

Allie blushes, and it only makes everything worse.

“You’re welcome.”

* * *

The last few, straggling days of the school year fly by, and when the news comes out that the asshole bio professor is retiring there’s an honest to god celebration. People keep coming up and congratulating Kima, which is honestly so incredible that even the prospect of going home for the summer can’t dampen her spirits.

Then, thank God, the internship she’s been chasing in her scant free time comes through and turns out she doesn’t have to go home, she’s staying in the city, and so is Allie, and––

“So, we should just live together,” Kima suggests over lunch. Her notes for her last final, which she took––and probably didn't fail––that morning, sit forgotten at her elbow. Everything feels remarkably distant as she watches Allura pour roughly seventeen packets of sugar into her coffee.

“Yes,” Allie agrees. “That sounds wonderful.”

She stirs it all together and takes a long drink, which is almost more impressive than watching her down a shot. Kima can't believe she's in love with this weird nerd.

“Great.”

For a moment they sit, staring out at the quad and the scattered groups of students there, studying for the afternoon block of finals or, like Kima and Allie, enjoying the first moments of the summer’s freedom.

“Kima,” says Allura.

“Hmm?”

“Would you like to go to the movies tonight? Together? On a date?”

“Oh,” says Kima, and the inside of her sort of does this fireworks thing and she can’t quite form words for a second. Then she says, “Yeah, that'd be cool.”

“Great,” says Allura, a little too casual. “And then after that maybe we can get dinner.”

“Okay,” says Kima. “And for desert, maybe we can egg Thordak’s car again. Since you got to have all the fun last time.”

Allie glances at her askance, and Kima grins, and then they’re both laughing, and maybe they’re getting weird looks from everyone around them but whatever, it’s fine, cause Kima’s in love with Allura Vysoren and for now, everything is kind of fucking perfect.


End file.
